sounds like a mess. so they are saying the more genetic diversity equals more cultural diversity? how are they defining “cultural diversity”? that seems highly subjective.
It is a mess. They define cultural diversity as the number of tropes in the folklore of different cultures. This is mostly based on the work of a single folklorist, who had to make all sorts of decisions about what constitutes a single culture (ie, Lower and Upper Egypt?)
these academics remind me of the Jared Diamond view of the world.
at one point in the Guns, Germs and Steel documentary, he tells his interlocutor that if Papa New Guinea had plenty of domesticated animals, perfect environmental conditions for agriculture and access to minerals like iron ore, they too would have created helicopters!
such wild leaps of faith boggle the mind. in my view, human evolution and culture are far too complex to be explained by these reductionist, agenda driven theories.
Courage is underrated as a way to find the truth, the Hero's Journey undefeated. Most scientists don't have the guts to spend some time in the wilderness
Genetic and archeological evidence show very strongly that Homo sapiens arose in Africa between 300 and 200,000 years ago and then spread to other continents from 70-60,000 years ago, with important but minoritarian (<5%) genetic contribution from other human species (such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, who developed in Eurasia, but still trace their ancestry to Africa in the last million years). In my understanding, genome-wide genetic diversity does decrease away from Africa, the environmental adaptations mentioned here making only a small minority of our genome, though a practically important one. I suppose mythology is not guaranteed to follow this pattern, being much more recent.
What's the strong archeological evidence? For example check out Figure 5 here, which models the common ancestor of Denisovan, Neanderthal, and Homo Sapien to have lived in Eurasia about a million years ago: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8454562/
The first "modern" skeletons are found in Africa. But those are not particularly modern, and that lineage may have entered Africa around that time period. So maybe humans were evolving in Africa 300kya-50kya. But the group that managed to take over the world 50kya, may have been in the Near East as far as we know. See the Arabian Standstill hypothesis which puts them in Arabia 80-50kya.
Further, skull shape shows major changes just in the last 100k or even 40kya. And there is lots of evidence for genetic changes related to modern behavior.
So, the story is getting quite complicated and I don't think Out of Africa is a very good model of human origins. Mostly because it's just a travel log. But it's also not clear how much of human evolution even happened in Africa.
By "archeological evidence" I referred to the total of bones (fossils and not), tools, shelters, etc. of human species before we were the last one standing. I must concede there are some reconstructions in which our ancestry line leaves Africa before returning to it; "the last million years" was not the best choice of cutoff. Still, it only takes a slightly longer timeline to draw all their ancestries back to Africa (certainly to the beginnings of genus *Homo*) once again, and I think it's safe to say a substantial majority of our evolution took place in that continent.
Also, whatever you consider to be the first truly modern *Homo sapiens*, population genetics also squarely places the earliest divergence of surviving genetic lines (again, excluding the Neanderthals & Denisovan components) in Africa. (I tried to summarize as much genetics research as I could here: https://www.deviantart.com/concavenator/art/Human-Genealogy-1100506801, but see some useful notes in the comments). The tree goes something like (Khoisan + (Pygmies + ( (West African + Nilotic) + (East African + everyone else) ) ) ).
To be fair, if you go even further back -- some 5 to 8 million years ago, when our line split from that of chimpanzees -- we'd end up around the Mediterranean Basin, possibly-but-not-surely on the European site of it; but I wouldn't call our ancestors of that time "human".
You are certainly correct in saying that, as always, It's More Complicated Than That. But I do think that in the old dispute of Out of Africa vs. Multiregionality, the former still has much the upper hand, if not total victory.
RE the last ones standing, that may have been quite late. Denisovan introgression in PNG 30-15kya. There are footprints, in the Americas 21kya, but no signs of modern human behavior until ~13kya. Archaic skulls and tools in Africa just 12kya. Also lots of genetic evidence for ghost populations in Africa analogous to Neanderthals in Europe; unclear when the last died out.
To me the timeline that makes most sense is we started to really become human ~60kya, and displaced everyone else by the Holocene. This isn't really OoA or multiregionalism
sounds like a mess. so they are saying the more genetic diversity equals more cultural diversity? how are they defining “cultural diversity”? that seems highly subjective.
It is a mess. They define cultural diversity as the number of tropes in the folklore of different cultures. This is mostly based on the work of a single folklorist, who had to make all sorts of decisions about what constitutes a single culture (ie, Lower and Upper Egypt?)
that’s wild.
these academics remind me of the Jared Diamond view of the world.
at one point in the Guns, Germs and Steel documentary, he tells his interlocutor that if Papa New Guinea had plenty of domesticated animals, perfect environmental conditions for agriculture and access to minerals like iron ore, they too would have created helicopters!
such wild leaps of faith boggle the mind. in my view, human evolution and culture are far too complex to be explained by these reductionist, agenda driven theories.
Courage is underrated as a way to find the truth, the Hero's Journey undefeated. Most scientists don't have the guts to spend some time in the wilderness
So, do we not all come from Africa then?
Well, that answer is getting more complicated. But this post is just pointing out myths are not a result of whatever happened 50,000 years ago
Genetic and archeological evidence show very strongly that Homo sapiens arose in Africa between 300 and 200,000 years ago and then spread to other continents from 70-60,000 years ago, with important but minoritarian (<5%) genetic contribution from other human species (such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, who developed in Eurasia, but still trace their ancestry to Africa in the last million years). In my understanding, genome-wide genetic diversity does decrease away from Africa, the environmental adaptations mentioned here making only a small minority of our genome, though a practically important one. I suppose mythology is not guaranteed to follow this pattern, being much more recent.
What's the strong archeological evidence? For example check out Figure 5 here, which models the common ancestor of Denisovan, Neanderthal, and Homo Sapien to have lived in Eurasia about a million years ago: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8454562/
The first "modern" skeletons are found in Africa. But those are not particularly modern, and that lineage may have entered Africa around that time period. So maybe humans were evolving in Africa 300kya-50kya. But the group that managed to take over the world 50kya, may have been in the Near East as far as we know. See the Arabian Standstill hypothesis which puts them in Arabia 80-50kya.
Further, skull shape shows major changes just in the last 100k or even 40kya. And there is lots of evidence for genetic changes related to modern behavior.
So, the story is getting quite complicated and I don't think Out of Africa is a very good model of human origins. Mostly because it's just a travel log. But it's also not clear how much of human evolution even happened in Africa.
By "archeological evidence" I referred to the total of bones (fossils and not), tools, shelters, etc. of human species before we were the last one standing. I must concede there are some reconstructions in which our ancestry line leaves Africa before returning to it; "the last million years" was not the best choice of cutoff. Still, it only takes a slightly longer timeline to draw all their ancestries back to Africa (certainly to the beginnings of genus *Homo*) once again, and I think it's safe to say a substantial majority of our evolution took place in that continent.
Also, whatever you consider to be the first truly modern *Homo sapiens*, population genetics also squarely places the earliest divergence of surviving genetic lines (again, excluding the Neanderthals & Denisovan components) in Africa. (I tried to summarize as much genetics research as I could here: https://www.deviantart.com/concavenator/art/Human-Genealogy-1100506801, but see some useful notes in the comments). The tree goes something like (Khoisan + (Pygmies + ( (West African + Nilotic) + (East African + everyone else) ) ) ).
To be fair, if you go even further back -- some 5 to 8 million years ago, when our line split from that of chimpanzees -- we'd end up around the Mediterranean Basin, possibly-but-not-surely on the European site of it; but I wouldn't call our ancestors of that time "human".
You are certainly correct in saying that, as always, It's More Complicated Than That. But I do think that in the old dispute of Out of Africa vs. Multiregionality, the former still has much the upper hand, if not total victory.
RE the last ones standing, that may have been quite late. Denisovan introgression in PNG 30-15kya. There are footprints, in the Americas 21kya, but no signs of modern human behavior until ~13kya. Archaic skulls and tools in Africa just 12kya. Also lots of genetic evidence for ghost populations in Africa analogous to Neanderthals in Europe; unclear when the last died out.
To me the timeline that makes most sense is we started to really become human ~60kya, and displaced everyone else by the Holocene. This isn't really OoA or multiregionalism